


I Need a Little Help Please

by StormLeviosa



Series: Batman Bingo 2020 fics [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Barbara Gordon, Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Batman Bingo, College, Gen, Gotham City is Terrible, Oracle helps out college students when she's bored, POV Original Character, POV Outsider, batfam mentioned, batman bingo 2020, finals week is hell, statistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24537334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: It was a statistical analysis paper about perceptions of superheroes in Gotham and she’d left it until the last minute, as usual.Students in Gotham worship Oracle because she's the most badass, awesome, wonderful heroine no one's ever heard of. There are shrines in the computer labs. If your essay is tough, you pray to her for aid and she will provide. Oracle is the patron saint of dying college students and everybody knows it.
Series: Batman Bingo 2020 fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625461
Comments: 5
Kudos: 139





	I Need a Little Help Please

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaffeineDammit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeineDammit/gifts).



> So we were talking on discord about Babs using her incredible computer skills for good and wiping all the Gotham students' debt just because she can and thus this fic was born. Idea is not mine really but I wrote it anyway because someone has to and it's the first ounce of inspiration I've had all week.

It was a statistical analysis paper about perceptions of superheroes in Gotham and she’d left it until the last minute, as usual. She didn’t panic though (if you ignore the frenzied phone calls at 2am, the incredibly apologetic emails to the class TA to ask what the fuck they were even meant to do, followed by the hour and a half curled up in bed watching Avatar to calm down because nothing is more relaxing than witnessing the utter perfection that is Uncle Iroh). She made a plan and she would put it into action… just as soon as this episode was finished.

She staked out a coffee shop in the nice-ish part of town which was not normally frequented by students (because she didn’t want to compete with others for her primary research sample and she only had two days to gather evidence if she wanted to have a full day to write the paper). It wasn’t a bad idea except for the fact that the coffee was horribly expensive and her bank account was crying. She watched for a while as the morning rush died away, working up the nerve to just walk up to someone and ask questions. The guy she settled on was the typical white middle-class man, probably on his day off. As he moved away from the counter, she waved at him and stood up.

“I’m a student at Gotham U doing a statistical analysis study. Would you mind answering some questions? It’ll only take a second, promise.” Hook, line and sinker.

> Interview Transcript (10:32 - Starbucks, 4th and Newnham)
> 
> Interviewer: Thanks for agreeing to answer my questions. This survey will be completely anonymous however I will need to ask some social-identification questions. I hope you don’t mind.
> 
> Interviewee 1: Not at all. Fire away.
> 
> Interviewer: Thank you very much. Firstly, your age.
> 
> Interviewee 1: I’m 35.
> 
> Interviewer: And your preferred gender? Prefer not to say is an option.
> 
> Interviewee 1: Male.
> 
> Interviewer: Perfect. And how would you describe your sexual orientation? Again, prefer not to say is an option.
> 
> Interviewee 1: I’m straight. Married with one kid.
> 
> Interviewer: Thank you very much. Your ethnicity? If you’d like to give your country or city of origin as well that would be fantastic.
> 
> Interviewee 1: I’m white and a Gothamite born and bred.
> 
> Interviewer: That’s awesome. I’m from Metropolis myself so this is all new for me. Of Gotham’s heroes and vigilantes, which would you say is your favourite?
> 
> Interviewee 1: Batman, definitely. He was the first and the best. My son will kill me for saying it, his favorite's Robin, but you can’t get better than the OG vigilante really. 
> 
> Interviewer: I wouldn’t tell your son you’ve said that! Thank you for your time, Sir. I hope you have a fantastic day.

After that first interview, she got into the swing of it a bit more, asked some more men, some women on their way back from the school run. She moved to a slightly seedier spot, nearer to Crime Alley, and interviewed some of the people on the street there. It was...enlightening.

> Interviewer: And which vigilante here in the city is your favourite?
> 
> Interviewee 17: Red Hood, man! He’s done so much for us little folk here in the alley. My sister’s kid was almost kidnapped and the Hood swooped in and broke open their whole operation, got all the kids back home. He looks out for us.

She hadn’t heard of Red Hood but the Crime Alley people loved him. A google search later told her that he was… a crime lord? She debated removing him from the sample but decided against it: enough people had mentioned him that clearly there was something she was missing. It was time to leave Crime Alley though. It wasn’t safe really and she didn’t want to stay longer than she had to. There was a park nearby and she could see plenty of joggers and dog walkers. Time to go accost some more unassuming members of the public.

> Interviewer: Could you state your ethnicity for the record? A country or city of origin would also be appreciated.
> 
> Interviewee 24: I’m African American. Moved out from Brooklyn when I was six.
> 
> Interviewer: Last questions and I’ll let you go. Which would you say is your favourite Gotham superhero?
> 
> Interviewee 24: Oh I just love the Signal. His costume’s so bright and he’s the only one who dares come out in the daytime. Like I get the Bat sticking to night patrols and shit but people still need saving when it’s light out. Signal does that. And he’s black like me! What a message to send to all the black kids in Gotham who get beat on every day. They can be heroes too.

A pattern started to emerge. Crime Alley loved the Red Hood. People of Color loved the Signal. Women had a soft spot for Batgirl and kids were obsessed with Robin. They were broad sweeps and of course there were exceptions, but the generalizations were there. She made her way back to campus to get some final data: college students.

> Interviewer: Who’s your favourite hero?
> 
> Interviewee 42: Oracle
> 
> Interviewee 48: Oracle. I owe her my degree.
> 
> Interviewee 54: Oracle, for sure. They’re underrated but so bad-ass.
> 
> Interviewee 59: Oracle. The rest of them would be dead without her.

... She didn’t know who Oracle was? After the twelfth time someone gave them as an answer, she got fed up and asked. The interviewee sent up what looked like a prayer and just said “Oracle the savior of college students. We owe her everything.” That cleared up precisely nothing. Google revealed nothing which was terrifying. Google knows everything. Google is her best friend. Google does not know who Oracle is.

Half past midnight and she was stuck in the library still. Her roommate Hannah had gone to an end of term party off campus and she was still writing this goddamn term paper. The graphs were fine. Clear trends, anomalies identified and accounted for, her thesis statement was fine. But she hated analysis. She hated her teacher. She hated term papers. She hated fucking 9am deadlines. Her head was buried in her arms and it was a mistake because she could feel the effects of the coffee wearing off. She sat bolt upright and blinked at her computer screen. There was a pop-up. Someone had hacked her computer?

“I can help you out with that term paper if you want” 

What. The. Fuck. Who in the world would hack her computer to help with a stats paper? But it was still only half done. It was due in under eight hours. She hadn’t slept for more than three hours a night for a week. Maybe some help would be appreciated. 

“Yes please” she typed back. Half an hour later, the paper was done. The dialogue box was still hovering in the corner of the screen, their discussion still visible. “Who are you?” she asked before it could disappear. 

“Oracle.”

The paper got an A and it was the first A she’d had all year. She passed the class. She dropped stats and took up computer programming next semester. It wasn’t any easier but sometimes if she was struggling really badly, with procrastination or deadlines or a particularly stubborn bit of code, that little dialogue box would pop up and Oracle would help her out. It was almost a rite of passage among students: to have their first Oracle encounter. The Comp Sci students had a shrine to them in the computer lab. When she graduated, she went (stupidly) back to do grad school and met the next phase of Oracle worshipers. No interviews this time. No hellish stats papers. Just honest conversation about the glory of the unsung hero Gotham needed but didn’t deserve. The shrine was bigger in the grad student common room. There was a small one in the library, another in the computer lab, the TA offices, the head librarian had one (she’d seen it when she’d gone for her interview about a job there: student loans wouldn’t pay themselves). It made sense but she always wondered why. Why would some genius hacker take the time in the middle of the night to help out dying college students? 

“The Bats are being boring.” ... Okay, Oracle. That makes perfect sense.

When she graduated again she started panicking. She was meant to be an adult now. She had a masters degree and a crippling amount of debt and she needed a job. She thought about moving back to Metropolis but Gotham had worked its way into her bones and she loved this city now. Gotham had opportunities for smart people and you don’t graduate with a 3.5gpa without being at least vaguely intelligent. Didn’t mean she had common sense. She got a flat with some of her grad school buddies and they struggled through entry level jobs and internships together. She got a job at Wayne Enterprises because everyone and their mother could get a job at Wayne Enterprises and she dreaded the day the loan repayment people started banging on her door. But they never came. And they never came for her friends. She didn’t dare question it but when she was pulling her hair out over some bullshit at work she remembered that little box and the Oracle that watched over them all.

**Author's Note:**

> So there we have it. Bab's is awesome.  
> I know nothing about how US college works or how stats papers work or how computers work so if I've got something horrifically wrong let me know 😂 Last time I did stats was over 3 years ago and I almost failed it.  
> Hope you all liked it?


End file.
